Florence and the Machine – Everybody Scream
The monstrous feminine has always been an element in Florence and the Machine’s music, but in sixth album, Everybody Scream, it takes centre stage to lead a healing ritual, or exorcism. Conceptualised after a miscarriage caused by an ectopic pregnancy nearly took Florence Welch’s life, the record pulls references from mysticism, witchcraft and folk horror to reckon with her rage and grief.
Working with the National’s Aaron Dessner (known for producing Taylor Swift’s Folklore), Mark Bowen of IDLES, and Mitski, Welch lets her best instrument, her voice, shine in this record. Two choirs add dimension, weaving a dark tapestry that makes the perfect backdrop for a poignant tale of death, resurrection and healing that might be her most personal record yet.
The title track captures the ritualistic, almost cult-like energy of Welch’s live shows, where she becomes a woman possessed, commanding audiences to “Dance!”, “Move!”, “Shake!” and “Scream!”. Her onstage persona wrestles with her everyday self, even if she gets hurt in the process, leaving “blood on the stage”.
Welch has described the creative process as “death and resurrection over and over”, and throughout the record, she speaks of the sacrifices of ambition and the experience of navigating a male-dominated music industry as a woman. One of the Greats, sung with righteous anger, questions the standards forming the pantheon of music gods, in a rigged game where a woman has “to profit from her madness” – but a man can “make boring music just because [he] can”.
Consumed by an overwhelming desire to create, in Music by Men, she admits she finds it hard to do “real life”, because “there isn’t much applause”, only compromise. And even so, her attempt to create life was what led to her brush with death; in Witch Dance, she likens it to a tryst that leads to her joining the ranks of grieving women, contending in You Can Have It All, that the price of womanhood is suffering as she mourns her lost baby: “A piece of flesh, a million pounds / Am I a woman now?” she asks.
Magic, in its most arcane form, has been a medium for healing, and Welch fills the album with hopeful affirmations. Perfume and Milk borrows “all shall be well” from 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich, drawing comparisons between her healing and nature. Gentle album closer And Love ends with a phrase line repeated over and over, like a spell: “Peace is coming”.
Antigoni Pitta
Image: Courtesy of Florence and the Machine
Everybody Scream is released on 31st October 2025. For further information or to order the album, visit Florence and the Machine’s website here.
Watch the video for Everybody Scream here:
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